Free Mars Exploration Rover 10-Year Anniversary Event Tonight

Artist's Concept of Rover on Mars

An artist's concept portrays a NASA Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars.

The public is invited to share, either in person or online, in a 10-year anniversary event for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity, tonight at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST). The event, hosted by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is being held in the Beckman Auditorium on the California Institute of Technology campus, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena. Admission is free and is on a first-come, first-served basis.

NASA's twin rovers launched separately in 2003 and landed three weeks apart in January 2004. They completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004 and went on to perform extended missions for years. Spirit and Opportunity made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Although Spirit ceased communicating with Earth in March 2010, the Opportunity rover continues its work on the Red Planet.

JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Spirit and Opportunity rovers for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information on the rovers' anniversary, visit http://mars.nasa.gov/mer10.